ness.

front and accept the stare of curiosity as a homage paid to greatThe author of "Ginx's Baby" is of this latter class, and is consequently a man predestined to fail in gaining the ear of an assembly which is in all the world the most mercilessly exact critic of manner. Mr. Jenkins obviously entered the House of Commons prepared to take it by storm, and the annals of Parliament do not record a more absolute or hopeless failure than the attempt made in the speech in which he formally presented himself as the coming Great Power. "I confess," writes Lord Chesterfield, "I cannot help forming some opinion of a man's sense and character from his dress, and I believe most people do, as well as myself. Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies in my mind a flaw in the understanding." A man who presents himself to the House of Commons at ten o'clock at night arrayed in a flaming red necktie, white waistcoat, and light trousers with a stripe down the side cannot fairly hope to be let off with the gentle censure implied in the use of the term "affectation." Odd fashions in dress abound in the House. Mr. Forster dresses like a market gardener out for a Sunday walk; Mr. Henley's face peers through a pair of gigantic shirt collars that would move to envy the ultimate men in a crescent of negro minstrels; Colonel Taylour's clothes were obviously made for somebody else; and Sir Colman O'Loghlen delights in the possession of a perennial pair of trousers which, unstitched, would, as far as quantity of cloth goes, serve admirably as the mainsail of a schooner. These are eccentricities which excite a smile. But the big red necktie and the white waistcoat are une autre paire de manches, and there is too much reason to fear that they are the results, not of "a flaw in the understanding," but of constitutional vulgarity of mind.

At any rate this theory receives support from Mr. Jenkins's manner in delivering his speech last month on the occupation of the Gold Coast. His atrocious taste in dress might have been condoned by modesty of mien. But the hon. member's manner was as "loud" and as aggressive as his attire. His easy way of resting his right hand in his trouser pocket, whence it occasionally emerged to indulge in a half contemptuous, half threatening gesture for persons who had the misfortune to differ from him; his lofty contempt for the present Government; his patronising way of referring to members of the late Ministry; his iteration of the "I advise the right hon. gentleman"; his repetition of the tragical declaration, "I am here to warn this House"; his perpetual "It seems to me;" his ever ready "My opinion is"; and, in brief, his sublime egotism, amused the House for a quarter of an hour. But after that signs of disgust

began to manifest themselves, and Mr. Jenkins, growing increasingly insufferable, finally sat down amid a storm of contumely altogether unprecedented in the case of a new member making his maiden speech.

Sir Charles Dilke does not owe any of the Parliamentary fame he may possess to the manifestation of gifts of oratory. The hon. baronet is, to tell the truth, a very wearisome speaker, and if he had not, as a rule, something to say that was worth listening to, he would never find an audience. If in any future edition of Mr. Robert Montgomery's poems a metaphorical illustration were required for the famous stream that

Meandered level with its fount,

the publisher could not do better than procure a carte-de-visite portrait of the hon. member for Chelsea as he appears when addressing the House of Commons. Sir Charles usually sits on the second or third seat on the front bench below the gangway, but when he rises to make a set speech he invariably stands partly in the gangway itself with his back turned to his personal friends. The note upon which he begins his oration is marvellously preserved throughout its full length, and as he monotonously turns his body from left to right, as if he were fixed on a pivot, the impression he leaves on the mind of the beholder is that the reservoir of his speech is ingeniously located in his boots, and that he is pumping it up. For an hour at a time the level stream, unrelieved by a single coruscation of wit, imagination, fancy, or humour, flows out upon the House of Commons. But the House, nevertheless, attentively listens, as far as human endurance can withstand the more than mortal monotony, for Sir Charles Dilke generally has something notable to say, and he has a fearless way of saying it which, to those who have souls capable of being stirred by the fire of political knight-errantry, covers a multitude of sins of

manner.

Mr. Horsman was a Lord of the Treasury before Sir Charles Dilke was born, and to-day sits on the bench behind him, an independent member. Perhaps with the exception of that of Mr. Roebuck, the Parliamentary career of Mr. Horsman is the most interesting, and, in some respects, the saddest, which occurs to one looking round the faces of the crowded benches of the House of Commons. He has always been a lonely man, sitting apart from his fellows, and, on five days out of the week, scowling upon them. His political friendships, made at rare intervals, have always been of brief duration, and generally have had for raison d'être an imagined necessity for attacking some one. Thus, during the Austro-Prussian War, Mr. Horsman's

sympathies being stirred for Austria, he found a congenial companion in Mr. Kinglake, and for some weeks the two were even as Damon and Phythias. A more widely-known friendship was that struck up between Mr. Horsman and Mr. Lowe at the epoch of the great Reform Bill debates, the union which Mr. Bright immortalised by likening "the party" to a Scotch terrier, of which no one could determine between the two extremities which was the head and which the tail. When, now nearly forty years ago, Mr. Horsman first entered Parliament, he seemed to have set his heart upon gaining a high place in Government, and in 1840 took office as Lord of the Treasury in the Administration of Viscount Melbourne. He went out with the Ministry when Peel returned to power in 1841, appearing again on the Treasury Bench in 1855 as Chief Secretary for Ireland. This office he resigned in June, 1857, for the singular reason that he "had not work enough to do." Since then he has been a sort of Vicar of Bray in the ranks of the Opposition-whatever Ministry has held the Treasury Bench, and on whichever side of the House he has himself sat, Mr. Horsman has preserved intact his self-assumed office of hostile critic.

In this way of enjoying life Mr. Horsman has, as may be easily understood, found no further lack of work to do. A "superior person," regarding public events from lofty heights fenced about by no personal friendships and no party ties, need have no idle moments for his bitter tongue. Nor can the accusation of idleness lie against Mr. Horsman. In his enlightened speeches against the French Commercial Treaty; in his denunciations of the abolition of the tax on paper; in his promulgation, in the teeth of the House of Commons, and in spite of the British Constitution, of the doctrine that in dealing with money Bills the House of Lords have equal rights with the representatives of the people; in his fierce assaults on Prussia; in his insinuations against France; in his tirades against Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright; in his personal attack on Mr. Walter in connection with that gentleman's management of his private property and disposal of his evening hours; and in his invective against the late Emperor of the French, who "jockeyed his own subjects out of their liberty," Mr. Horsman has found from time to time full employment of a kind more congenial than that of assisting Taper and Tadpole at the Treasury, or of endeavouring to do justice to Ireland. As a speaker Mr. Horsman's style savours a good deal of the Union Debating Society. There is a steady pendulum swing about his sentences which irritates the familiar listener with the consciousness that having heard the first portion he knows beforehand

how they will finish. Sydney Smith satirised the undue tendency to antithesis on the part of Dr. Parr by a passage in which he supposes the doctor observing of some persons that "they have profundity without obscurity, perspicuity without prolixity, ornament without glare, terseness without barrenness, penetration without subtlety, comprehensiveness without digression, and a great number of other things without a great number of other things." Mr. Horsman differs from "the learned critic and eminent divine" (whom there is too much reason to fear the multitude of the present day confound with the purveyor of pills) inasmuch that his proneness to the lavish use of antithesis is shown in the construction of his sentences as a whole rather than in the contrasting of isolated words. There is a curious expression about Mr. Horsman's face which consorts well with the general tenour of his Parliamentary addresses. Somebody-I think it is the author of "Rab and his Friends"—has said of a dog that it bore upon its face an expression of inquiring interest, as if life were for it a very serious thing. Mr. Horsman, when he is putting a question to Mr. Disraeli, has upon his face exactly the look which is here referred to, and which any one can see for himself by approaching an unfamiliar bull-terrier left in charge of the garden entrance to a house-a look of anxious, doubtful, half-surly inquiry, which may be the prelude either to a savage growl or an intimation that you may advance, according as the scrutiny proves satisfactory or otherwise. Mr. Horsman's influence upon a debate has greatly lessened in recent Sessions, but he is still a power in the House, and will probably before the Session is over have something soothing to say about his ancient adversary the present Premier.

Sitting in the corner seat of the front bench below the gangway on the Opposition side is a man so old and feeble looking that the stranger wonders what he does here. His white hair falls about a beardless face which is comparatively fresh looking, though the eyes lack lustre and the mouth is drawn in. When he rises to speak he bends his short stature over a supporting stick, and as he walks down to the table to hand in the perpetual notice of motion or of question, he drags across the floor his leaden feet in a painful way that sometimes suggests to well-meaning members the proffer of an arm, or of service to accomplish the errand, advances which are curtly repelled, for this is Mr. Roebuck, the "Dog Tear'em” of old, toothless now, and dim of sight, but still high in spirit, and ready to fight with snarl and snap the unwary passer-by. It is said in tea-room conversation that Mr. Roebuck has changed his political opinions oftener than any other man in the present House. Perhaps

the allegation, whilst made in good faith, is unconsciously exaggerated, because Mr. Roebuck, on whichever side he has ranged himself, has always been in the van of opinion, and has prominently figured as its exponent, and consequently his facings about occupy a larger space in the memory than those of other men. There was a time when he was a thorough-paced Radical, a friend of Mr. Stuart Mill and Sir William Molesworth. He has twice graduated as a Tory, with some bewildering counter marches and strategic movements which have finally landed him in the political position he holds to-day, and which is best and most safely described as that of Mr. Roebuck, the member for Sheffield. In one of his papers in the Spectator, Addison, referring to the contemporary fashion amongst ladies of wearing patches stuck on one side or other of their faces according as they were Whig or Tory, says: "I must here take notice that Rosalinda, a famous Whig partisan, has, most unfortunately, a very beautiful mole on the Tory part of her forehead, which being very conspicuous has occasioned many mistakes and given a handle to her enemies to misrepresent her face as though it had revolted from the Whig interest." Mr. Roebuck is in the same unfortunate predicament as the lady here referred to. He has a Whig mole on the Tory part of his forehead, and during his political career he has undergone much obloquy as a consequence of the numerous mistakes which have therefrom arisen.

Mr. Roebuck is a good lover and a good hater, chiefly the latter. A Parliamentary Ishmael, his hand has been against every one and every one's hand against him. Lord Palmerston, Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden-in brief, every man of any prominence in the House of Commons during the past quarter of a century-has at one time or another felt the fangs of "Tear'em." The poor wit and coarse humour of Bernal Osborne were no match for the keen and poisoned darts that were shot forth from Mr. Roebuck's tongue. Mr. Bethel, since known as Lord Westbury, was perhaps the only man in the House in the days when there were giants who could beat him at his own weapons. The present Mr. Justice Keogh sometimes threw himself into the breach, and once even silenced the terrible talker for a whole night by a quotation from "Macbeth." The House was in Committee, and Mr. Roebuck had been up three times with objections and aspersions. When Mr. Keogh rose he opened his remarks by observing—

Thrice the brindled cat hath mewed.

Mr. Roebuck's persistent attacks upon the late Emperor of the French will not be forgotten by the present generation, who will also